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Officials will check for sex offenders at child-care centers

Sentinel & Enterprise

Updated:
03/29/2013 06:32:17 AM EDT

By Colleen Quinn

State House News Service

BOSTON -- State early-education and public-safety officials plan to develop a joint plan to institute a statewide system in which the addresses of all Level 2 and Level 3 sex offenders are cross-checked against licensed child-care programs.

The Department of Early Education and Care revoked the licenses of four family child-care providers -- one each in Leominster and Methuen, and two in Springfield -- who failed to report or disclose to EEC that a registered sex offender was, or had been, living on the premises, according to EEC officials.

Unlike 17 other states, Massachusetts currently has no statutory or regulatory requirements for state child-care agencies, such as the EEC, to match registered sex offenders' addresses to licensed child-care providers' addresses, according to a report released Wednesday from State Auditor Suzanne Bump.

Bump and state lawmakers on Wednesday called on EEC to implement the address check in response to the audit that initially found that 119 addresses of registered sex offenders matched locations of licensed child-care programs.

In their response to the audit, EEC officials said they planned to implement a system.

Acting Commissioner Thomas Weber said EEC has been in touch with public-safety officials to start the process.

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"We are going to be running regular cross references of our provider list, and those addresses against the sex-offender registry database, so we continue to monitor any occasions when children in the care of our providers may be coming in contact with registered sex offenders," Weber said Thursday.

Weber said the department is developing a new process.

"We are going to undertake this process, and we should undertake this process," he said. "It has not been required of us, but common sense tells us we should, and we will."

The Boston Police Department routinely compares child-care providers' addresses, obtained from the EEC database, to the addresses of registered Level 2 and Level 3 sex offenders in their jurisdiction, and then contacts EEC to alert them to any matches, according to the auditor's report.

Lawmakers commended the move and the auditor's report that led to the changes.

State Rep. Linda Dorcena Forry commended Bump for uncovering "deficiencies" in the early-education system, and touted legislation she filed aimed at ensuring "safe, healthy and nurturing" family home-care settings. Under the Dorchester Democrat's bill, licensors would be required to perform quarterly check-ins, without notice, to ensure that homes are in safe condition and that household members and frequent visitors are identified.

The State Auditor's Office, which was conducting a routine audit of the department, immediately alerted EEC officials about the 119 address matches. EEC officials then investigated and discovered 54 sex offenders' addresses overlapped with child-care providers, according to EEC.

Of the 119 initial address matches, 16 involved programs that were closed; 39 were addresses or programs located on community-college campuses or places of employment where the identified sex offender was either attending school or working; and 10 had no match for licensed programs at any of the up to three addresses provided.

EEC officials on Thursday pointed out that at the four locations where licenses were revoked, none of the crimes the registered sex offenders were convicted of involved children.

"That does not make them any less of a concern," Weber said.

EEC officials believe no children were harmed at any of the locations investigated.

"With respect to the remaining 54 addresses, EEC was able to determine that in several instances, the child-care provider and the registered sex offender resided in the same building but in different units and at different times," EEC officials responded in the auditor's report. "In these instances, EEC directed the licensee to complete a safety plan for the children in care."

The audit compared the most recently reported home addresses of all Level 2 and Level 3 registered sex offenders to all licensed child-care provider addresses from July 1, 2010, through Sept. 30, 2011.

"It is important to note that the addresses included in the Massachusetts (Sex Offender Registry Board) database are self-reported by offenders, and it is possible that some addresses listed in the SORB database may be inaccurate or out of date," the report stated. "Accordingly, although all necessary steps were taken to reasonably ensure the accuracy of our analysis, it is possible that some sex offenders may have been excluded from our match list."

The 50 child-care providers discovered to live in the same building, but different units than registered sex offenders, were required to have safety plans in place, developed in conjunction with EEC, to ensure that children have no contact and are not at risk, according to Weber.

A provider's license is not revoked if they have proximity to a registered sex offender because people do not have control over who moves into their building, Weber said, adding that people can only control who lives within their unit.

"People are transient. Circumstances change over time," Weber said. "Those people providing care to children who may live in proximity to a registered sex offender, which is beyond their control, still need to make provisions to ensure that the children are safe."

According to the auditor's findings, EEC also failed to do annual unannounced visits at residential child-care facilities, which the agency is required by law to do. Many states require two unannounced visits per year, according to Bump's office.

The auditor also found that EEC was not enforcing Criminal Offender Record Information, or CORI, check requirements, and failed to ensure that licensed child-care providers performed the required CORI checks on their staff when they were hired, as well as rechecked them every three years.

Out of a sampling of 39 group child-care providers, 10 percent were missing CORI checks or had outdated checks.

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